A police tactical unit vehicle driving on Riggs Avenue toward the scene of a shooting involving an off-duty Baltimore City Police officer at a house on the 1100 block of Parrish Street. The officer apparently shot a woman then barricaded himself in a house.

A police tactical unit vehicle driving on Riggs Avenue toward the scene of a shooting involving an off-duty Baltimore City Police officer at a house on the 1100 block of Parrish Street. The officer apparently shot a woman then barricaded himself in a house. (Kenneth K. Lam, Baltimore Sun)

Recorded 911 calls released Tuesday reveal frantic reports from neighbors who described the scene as Baltimore police said an off-duty officer shot and killed his girlfriend then barricaded himself in a home for six-hours.

"The neighbor across the street she's laying down on the ground beside about four police cars," one woman told an emergency dispatcher as the West Baltimore incident unfolded. "One ambulance came and backed out. She's laying on the ground and bleeding terrible, and I haven't seen an ambulance since."

The woman's anguished conversation was among the calls in the fatal May 7 shooting of Kendra Diggs and the subsequent standoff between police and , officer James Smith.

On that day, Baltimore police said Diggs, 37, and Smith, 49, a 20-year police veteran, got into a domestic dispute that drew two police officers to their home in the 1100 block of N. Parrish Street.

An officer escorted Diggs, who had a facial wound, out of the house while the other officer asked Smith, who was off-duty, to come outside. Instead, police said, he went upstairs, pulled out his gun and fired through a second-floor bedroom window at Diggs, killing her.

The shooting sent the two officers running for cover and a standoff involving SWAT, police negotiators and the evacuation of dozens of residents nearby began. Because police feared Smith would shoot at paramedics, police said, Diggs wasn't retrieved from a sidewalk in front of the house for several minutes until a SWAT team carried her out using shields to protect themselves.

Smith surrendered without incident. He is being held without bail, charged with first-degree murder and use of a firearm in a felony.

Baltimore City Police Commissioner Anthony Batts announces that an off-duty police officer who had been barricaded in a West Baltimore house has been taken into custody. (Justin Fenton/Baltimore Sun video)